Chapter Thirty-Five #2
“No?” Behind me, Dorian hummed contemplatively, closing the entrance we’d come through with a snick . “I suppose you’re trapped, then.”
With the click of the latch, a vein of ice throbbed in my chest, cracking my sternum like frost through rock. I whirled around. “Let me out.”
Dorian sighed morosely, slumping against the doorframe.
“Don’t be tedious. I am obviously not going to do that, considering it would undo all the effort I’ve just put in to get you here.
” Lifting his hand, he picked idly at something beneath his thumbnail, his gaze finding mine from beneath the black fringe of his lashes. “Any other demands?”
I said nothing, only watched him, my heart thumping with untamed fear. Had he even been sent to retrieve me for the fourth trial, I wondered frantically, or had he merely dangled its promise before me like a lure to encourage me to leave my bedroom? And why hadn’t I suspected his motives earlier?
Eliot. My blame found its target easily, a knife struck true. Eliot had told me I’d be paired with Dorian for the next test, so when the judge appeared at my threshold less than an hour later, his presence felt expected rather than odd. Damn him.
Forcing my thoughts into order, I examined my surroundings for escape routes.
Positioned in front of the entrance as he was, there was no way I could bypass Dorian to get to the door; his tall frame, so lithe and attractive when glimpsed in the warm candle glow of a ballroom, now served as an impediment, snuffing out my hopes of escape.
The area of Fortblanche he’d led me to was remote enough that I was confident neither of the judges would cross this way without reason.
If I were to scream, my cries would go unheard, my absence unnoticed for at least as long as the trial went on.
The coin. I remembered it abruptly, my resentment toward Eliot himself ever so slightly waning. As subtly as I could manage, I worked my hand into the slit in my skirt and tapped the token—once, twice, three times.
Warmth bloomed against my knuckles, the sensation so intensely comforting that I was forced to hold back a sob.
Somewhere in the gray expanse of the house, I knew, Eliot’s token would be lighting up in the same manner—but even if he registered my call, it would tell him nothing about my location.
Would he find me in time? Would he want to, after how I’d treated him earlier?
Taking my silence as an answer, Dorian went on. “Nothing?” he asked briskly. “Wonderful. My turn, then.” Straightening, he took a step away from the door, his hands clasped behind his back. “Tell me, Miss Lovett: Where did you go after your dinner with Mr.Noé last night?”
At his question, my anxiety spiked. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” I replied, withdrawing my fingers from my pocket. “I went to my room—to sleep, of course.”
“Of course.” Dorian mimicked me, exhaling a soft laugh. “I don’t mean to offend, but I’m not sure that’s quite right. You see, I spoke with Noé, and he said you left his room shortly after dusk. And yet according to the other maidens, when they returned from supper themselves, you were still gone.”
He drew another languid pace nearer, his movements easy with a liquid, feline grace.
“I thought I heard a little mouse skittering about in the tunnels last night,” he said.
His tone was hushed now, muted with the quiet intensity of a finger on a trigger.
“I believed it to be my partner at first, but after Anais reported your absence at dinner, I started to wonder…You were there, too, weren’t you?
Spying on me, like a rodent lingering just out of view. ”
There was an acrid taste in my mouth, like a bitter wash of bile. My eyes darted to the door—still firmly shut, despite the continuous bleed of heat I could feel being leeched from the coin in my pocket. Where was Eliot?
“I’m sorry, Mr.Drake,” I said cautiously. “I believe you are mistaken. I have never visited any tunnels.”
Dorian gave another chuckle, cynical this time. Before I could react, he was moving, crossing to me and grasping my wrist firmly with one hand.
I made a pathetic, pained noise. His grip was crushing, his strength like iron.
Grunting, he pulled me against him, his other hand forcing my chin up to meet his stare.
“I am not sure you understand your situation, Miss Lovett, for you seem to believe you can toy with me,” he said, and more than anything, it was the calmness in his voice that struck terror into my bones—a glassy flatness like the windows that surrounded us.
“Let me be clear: Since I had the misfortune of witnessing your presentation at the start of this competition, I have found you irritating, disagreeable, and uncooperative. I have left you alone only out of respect for my friend, and now you have done me the immense favor of wandering directly into my path. If you wish to leave this room alive, you will answer me willingly, and in complete honesty.” His nails dug into the flesh of my cheeks, his hold such that I could feel their bite in my teeth.
“Do we understand one another?” he murmured lowly.
I swallowed, hatred clotting within me. “We do,” I said.
Dorian’s grip on me relaxed a fraction—though not enough to grant me any sort of reprieve. “Excellent,” he replied. “I’ll make things easy for you, then. You may answer with a yes or a no: Did Sybil Dabos tell you how to find the tunnels?”
Answering felt humiliating, each word a further defeat, but I did. “No.”
“You are aware that it was there that she died, though.”
“Yes.”
His fingers flexed—my obedience had pleased him. “Good girl,” he said. “Let’s see if you can keep it up. Next question: Miss Dabos stole something of Mr.Alaire’s before she perished. Do you know what it is?”
As he spoke, his eyes bored deeper into mine, their blue depths so close that I knew he would see any lies between us.
Tilted unnaturally upward by his hand, my face was excruciatingly near to his; in any other circumstance, the distance separating us would have been intimate, thin enough that a kiss could have breached it.
“A key,” I guessed after a moment. “One that Mr.Alaire wants back.”
He tsk ed. “That was rather longer than a yes, but I’ll forgive it. This last one is very important,” he said. “Do you know where we can find it?”
I was not foolish enough to break his gaze and glance at the door again, but with my remaining energy, I willed Eliot’s search onward.
My answers were running out too quickly; soon, I would have no more to give, and I did not like my odds when that time came.
“Tell me what it opens.” I hedged instead. “And perhaps I will remember.”
Dorian’s grin faded. “What a pity,” he said, the word like a needle slipped down my spine. “And here you were doing sowell.”
I winced as his nails pinched harder into my cheeks.
“If you kill me, your chance of finding the key will die also,” I said hurriedly.
When he stiffened in reaction, I drew an inhale, forcing my thoughts to settle.
“Ophelia Lear was looking for it before she died, too, wasn’t she?
” I pressed, my attention still on him. “Why? What is behind the moonless door?”
We were watching each other so carefully that even the smallest shift of his features was noticeable to me, every adjustment like the repositioning of a game board, and there was a breath in which I felt the scales tip in my favor—where his confidence wavered and I thought, for a dizzying second, that I might win.
Then: a rightening, a correcting, like a dancer regaining his balance. His eyes narrowed, his tone dropping dangerously. “Can you describe this key for me, Miss Lovett?”
I blanched and immediately felt the gravity of my mistake. Hastily, I tried to cover it—to speak or distract him in some way—but it was too late.
Dorian dropped my chin with a satisfied scoff, his other hand maintaining its tight grip on my wrist. “You have never seen it,” he said almost gleefully. “And if you have never seen it, you can be of no use to me.”
His arm tensed, as though he was preparing to strike. Before he could, I snapped my own free hand up, driving my heel hard into the bridge of his nose. I felt something give when my blow landed, hot blood weeping onto my wrist.
Howling, he released me. I made it two loping steps toward the door before I felt his arms cinch around me again, this time locking over my middle like a vise. I screamed as he picked me up, hauling me to the nearest window and fumbling with thelatch.
Wind whipped in, stealing my cries. With brutal strength, Dorian forced me to my knees, holding my arms behind my back and thrusting my head out over the window ledge.
My voice died, fear scratching in my chest like a cat.
Beneath me, the cliffs were so steep they were like a vertical horizon, crashing into the ocean far below.
“Funny thing about Noé Alaire.” Dorian’s whisper was harsh as he pushed my neck further out into the open. “Personally, I don’t see the appeal, but all you maidens keep…falling for him.”
The bang of the door against the wall was muffled in my ears, like a distant gunshot. As if through a body of water, I heard someone call out, “Well, well. Hello there, friends.”
Eliot. Immediately, Dorian’s hold on me slackened. Still in my kneeling position, I twisted my head toward the entrance, searching for him, but my former partner was nowhere to be found. Instead, Noé Alaire leaned against the doorway, his features placid and eerily blank.
His appearance seemed to take Dorian by surprise as much as it did me. “Noé,” he started, his hands still holding my own behind my back. “I was just fetching Miss Lovett for the fourthtrial—”
“Oh, Dor.” Noé’s expression was pitying; his voice never so much as rose beyond a cordial speaking level, and yet I felt the weight of his words like a front of cold air, plunging the temperature in the room. “You know how I dislike lies.”
Remaining where he was, Noé cocked his head to the right.
“Get away from her,” he said calmly. When the other judge remained where he was, Noé arched a brow.
“Ignoring me, are you? Yet my father assures me you are clever, and defying me would not be at all,” he remarked.
He smiled thinly, his tone dangerously even.
“Which are you, Drake? Are you a clever man, or an imbecile?”
Dorian leveled a final withering glare at me; then, his shoulders pulled taut, he let me go.
Pleased, Noé straightened against the doorframe. “Good choice. Now, leave us, please.”
Dorian’s jaw clenched. Hesitating, he angled his chin down, to where I knelt, crumpled, beneath him. “If you—”
Only then did Noé take a single step forward, interrupting his fellow judge before he could finish. His posture was rigid, his advance as telling as a nocked arrow—promising violence. “Out.”
This time, Dorian did not dare delay. Cursing, he stalked from the room, slipping past Noé without turning back.
As soon as he’d gone, all Noé’s easiness seemed to vanish. He rushed to my side, taking me by the shoulders.
“Are you all right?”
His tone was urgent, his features tight with concern.
I stared at him, stupefied, as his hands rose to my face, wiping away crescents of moisture from under my eyes.
Tears? Was I crying? I felt oddly removed from my own body, as if I had lingered too long in the snow; all of me was numbness, fuzzed, indistinct whiteness.
“L—Miss Lovett. I need you to answer me. Look—here, at me.” Noé’s palm cupped my cheek, his eyes, intent and starkly gray, pulling me back to myself. “Good,” he said, when our gazes made contact. “Now tell me: Are you all right?”
I swallowed, attempting to force some moisture into my mouth, and in response, Noé knelt beside me. When the back of his wrist brushed the side of my dress skirt, he jerked away, flinching as if startled.
The abruptness of the movement sobered me. Blinking the remaining moisture from my eyes, I glanced down just in time to see his right hand slip elegantly into my pocket, extracting the circular, glowing object from within.
He frowned, squinting against the pale cut of its light. “Now what is this…?”
My heart stopped. Eliot’s coin. The bronze piece was resting in Bastian’s heir’s palm—and unlike when I had played Knave’s Cup with his father, the enchantment on it was active. My con with Eliot was seconds away from being discovered.
There was no time to think—no time to question my decisions. Noé’s thumb moved over the back of the coin, his lips pressed together as if in consideration. Only a minute more, and he would ask me about it again, and I could think of only one way to halt his examination…
Giving in to my impulse, I rolled my eyes back in my head and, with a sigh, let myself drop to the floor.